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PUBLIC LIFE n WASHINGTON, 



THE MORAL ASPECTS OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL, 



APPARENT TENDENCIES OF POLITICAL THOUGHT AND 
' FEELING IN CONGRESS AND CABINET. 



AN ADDRESS 



READ ON SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 7, 1866, TO HIS OWN CONGRE 

GATION, 



HENKY W. BELLOWS, 



MINISTER OF "ALL SOULS' CHURCH. 




NEW YORK: 

JAMES MILLER 
1866. 



■IB 4 



ADDRESS. 



The real progress of Cliristianity is to be meas- 
ured by the influence it obtains in tlie actual govern- 
ment of the world. For the rulers of society rule 
only by reflecting the public sentiment of the nations 
or communities they govern. No tyrant is more 
absolute than the servility of his people encourages 
or allows him to be. No monarchy is limited further 
than the independent spirit of its subjects requires. 
The ministry of Great Britain resigns when the 
Commons, the representatives of the people, express, 
by a decisive majority, any lack of confidence in their 
policy. The moral state of a peoj^le is safely judged 
by the measures its rulers encourage. The actual 
piety, the amount and quality of the Christian faith 
and character of the people of this country is, with 
tolerable precision, to be estimated from the tone, 
character, and atmosphere of its capital, the quality 
of its legislators, the temper and spirit of its rulers. 
Do the American people understand the Christian 
religion— its law of brotherhood — its reverence for 
justice — its faith in a Holy God — its requirement of 
personal purity and spotless integrity in its disci23les ? 
Go and see what sort of men they choose to repre- 
sent them and rule them ! Do you say that courts 
and governments have always been more corrupt 



tliau the people about them ; that power and station 
are seductive and betraying ; that virtue and piety 
dwell in the shade, and love retirement ; that it is 
the common people who constitute the moral strength 
and excellency of every nation. There is truth in 
this under governments, founded on hereditary rights, 
and in nations given over to the control of a native 
nobility. But, in a country like ours, so nearly a 
pure rejDresentative one, there can be no error in 
judging the spirit and temper of the people, their 
intelligence, moral tone, and religious feeling, by the 
character and spirit of their rulers, — the men they 
select from all others to speak and act for them at 
the national capital, and in the Congress of the coun- 
try. If the Senate of the United States were com- 
posed of dissolute, scofSng, worldly-minded, self-seek- 
ing men, whose personal probity and principles were 
at the mercy of bribes of money or place, we should 
have just reason to doubt whether the communities 
that send them there as their chosen, foremost men, 
were not themselves hollow, faithless, and without 
respect for the Christian religion. Of course, we all 
know that very able politicians, and even powerful 
statesmen, are not always good men ; even when 
they foirly do the work expected of them, and ably 
maintain the principles or policies they are chosen to 
uphold. Politics and statesmanship are a trade, 
requiring practice, experience, address ; and many a 
community, dissatisfied with its representative on 
moral grounds, or distrustful of his personal charac- 
ter, persists in sending him to Congress, because 
better men, and men it more honoi*s and trusts, lack 
the experience required for the j)lace. Eminent 
talents, too, and a national prestige, carry some others 
on in a high political career, long after they are 



universally suspected of want of Ligli principle or 
moral worth. It is not that the people necessarily ap- 
prove of, or mean to wink at, the unworthiness — but 
that they have so strong a sense of other important 
qualifications, that they put up with the moral de- 
fects. 

For goodness, or fixed principle, or faith and 
piety, are not of themselves alone qualifications for 
public office. We must have knowledge, strength of 
intellect, powers of expression, and capacity for busi- 
ness, besides. 

Another thing is to be taken into consideration. 
The machinery of elections robs the people in certain 
States and communities of a fair opportunity of 
nominating and electing men of their own choice and 
approval; and this is to be allowed for in judging 
the people by their rulers. Just in proportion as the 
national theory of representation is falsified by any 
cause, the test we propose is vitiated to the extent of 
the perversion of the principle. On the whole, we 
do not doubt that the national taste, principle, piety 
and will, find a fair and just expression in our Con- 
gress and our rulers. Sometimes the Eepresentatives 
are better than the communities they rej)resent and 
sometimes woi*se ; but the average is nearly correct. 

Having just enjoyed an opportunity of studying 
this question for ten days at the capital, I propose to 
give you, in the interest of national morals, the result 
of my cursory observations. 

And I begin with saying, that nobody goes to 
Washington with any prejudices in its favor ! If the 
old adage were infallible, "What eveiybody says 
must prove true," the national capital would have an 
almost infamous character. It has been the common 
usage of the country, the familiar scandal of the press, 



6 

and the gossip of transient visitors to Washington, as 
long as I can recollect, to speak of it as a sink of 
corruption, a place of universal jobbery and self- 
seeking; where villainous contractors and dark-lan- 
terned party conspirators, heavy gamblers, hard 
drinkers, and showy and careless women, gathered 
round a Congress in which, with brilliant exceptions, 
measures were carried and policies fixed by secret 
machinations and selfish bargainings. The Govern- 
ment Departments have commonly been represented 
as poor-houses for the relations and friends of Con- 
gressmen, — where inefficient, lazy fellows got fair 
pay for next to no work. Washington is even now 
usually represented as a specially immoral community 
in its own fixed population, — a place where drunken- 
ness, crime, disease, discomfort, and want have a 
marked existence and rule. 

This opinion, even if true, is widely injurious, and 
has a tendency to lower the general character of our 
people ; if not true, its injuriousness is wanton and 
without excuse. Of course there is always some 
foundation for such opinions. It is not to be denied, 
then, that before the war the Southern States made 
Washington, to a considerable extent, the rendezvous 
of their rich, reckless young men ; nor that, in the days 
of national compromises, it was the scene of much 
underhand political bargaining ; nor that, during the 
war, army-officers made it the place of much carous- 
ing ; nor that a large percentage of its people living 
in hotels, the usual evils of that kind of life, always 
exist there ; nor that it does not have the ordinary 
vices, follies, and extravagancies of all capitals, and 
especially crowded and fluctuating towns. Hasty 
visitors, knowing only the hotel life of Washington, 
would misiud2:e the place, and yet think themselves 



fully justified iu tlieir unfovorable opinion Ijy the 
testimony of tlieir senses. 

Now, tlie last five years have given me unusual 
opportunities of knowing and judging Washington as 
a place, and as a capital, both in its fixed residents 
and in its floating population ; and I have no earthly 
reason for speaking better of it than it deserves,- — no 
present or prospective private interest in it to warp 
my judgment. And I say that either the last five 
years have wholly changed its character, or that its 
bad reputation is chiefly unmerited. 

Washington has, I think, the most select, intelli- 
gent, and varied population of any city of its size 
in this country. Successive administrations always 
leave, as fixed residents there, a certain valuable 
percentage of those they have drawn to the sj^ot. 
Retired and accomplished army and navy officers 
abound. Inventors, men of science and letters, intel- 
ligent foreigners, and persons of fortune from the 
South and West, collect there. It is this class of 
fixed residents who have built up the churches of 
Washington, which are singularly numerous and 
uncommonly well attended. For Washington is a 
conspicuously church-going place, and on the whole 
even superstitious in its ecclesiastical tendencies. The 
Catholic, the Protestant-Episcopal, the Presbyterian, 
the Methodist churches fiourish with peculiar vitality 
there ; and the natives and fixed residents seem to be 
a quiet, decorous, intelligent, moral, and religious 
people, — comparing favorably with any other com- 
munity in the country. 

Besides the fixed lesideuts, there is a great float- 
ing population in Washington, composed of three 
classes : 

1. Congressmen and their families, with Cabinet 



8 

ministers, military and naval officers attacbed to the 
Departments and Bureaus, and tlie Diplomatic Corps, 
who may be supposed to form an intelligent and 
interesting class of persons. 

2. Several thousand clerks connected with the 
Departments, probably not less than six thousand, — 
as there are 2,500 in the Treasury alone. This very 
important body of men of all ages (some with, but 
most without families), is a very different class of per- 
sons from what it is commonly supposed to be. A 
finer set of men, judging by their heads and expres- 
sion of countenance, it would be difficult to collect. 
It is composed of that portion of our American popu- 
lation bred to trade and commerce, or the professions, 
which possesses too little self-reliance and forwardness 
to lead off successfully in busii^ess of their own — men 
broken down or unsuccessful only from excess of sen- 
sibility, or from having more reflection than executive 
faculty. A general intellectuality, a half ministerial 
air, characterizes some hundreds of these men. They 
are scrimped in their means, if they have families ; all 
tied to business from 9 a. jr.. to 4 p. m., and always 
with quite as much as they can do in office-hours. 
The regulations of all the Departments are rigid and 
sj exact. In the Treasury, the admirable system of 
methods, originated by the great mind of Alexander 
Hamilton, equally wonderful for grasp and accuracy, 
in management of principles and of particulars, still 
prevails, and it is said admits of no improvement while 
allowing indefinite extension. The acti^dty of the 
Departments, the amount of labor and care borne by 
the Heads of Bureaus and their clerks, is little known 
to distant observers, and should save them from the 
suspicion of being mere pensioners upon the public 
bounty. The passion for political clerkship in Ameri- 



9 

ca, so strange to enterprising and self-reliant men, is 
due to the fact that the hot, competitive life of our 
country does not suit all temperaments ; and govern- 
ment clerkships are about the most independent posi- 
tions which men with few wants, little enterprise, and 
a great shrinking from responsibility can find. What 
Charles Lamb abroad, and Halleck and SjDrague at 
home, coveted and accepted, — permanent clerkships, 
that they might pursue literature and poetry in their 
leisure hours, free from personal business resjoonsibili- 
ties, — still draws hundreds of Americans out of the 
Professions and away from Commerce into the calm re- 
treats of the Government Departments ; and this class 
of men are a very valuable element of the floating 
population of Washington ; and a much steadier and 
more intelligent class than ordinary clerks in com- 
mercial cities. 

3. A third class of the floating population is 
what may be called the Lobby — I mean those persons 
having business with the Departments or with Con- 
gress — interested in patents, in grants for projected 
Railroads, anxious to secure modifications of the Tar- 
ifij or pressing private claims, or urging political mea- 
sures. As a rule, this is a body of marked and ener- 
getic men, j)icked out usually by parties at home for 
tact, force, and persistency — for skill in exj^laining or 
enforcing their views and policy, — and -power in car- 
rying their point. It is impossible to sit at a public 
table at Washington without confronting these men, 
changing almost every day ; but all with so much char- 
acter, purpose, determination and address in their faces 
that the very air is electric with the currents of vital 
energy they give out. It is rare to meet a j)erson of 
merely average force ,or common-place appearance in 
this crowd ; and I do not doubt that there is more 



»^ 



10 

planning, originating, scheming l3rain at work every 
day of tlie session at the Capital than in any other place 
of its size in the country. This Lobby is the rej^re- 
sentation, outside of Congress, of every state and terri- 
tory, of every industry and art, of every claim and en- 
terprise in the nation. Every considerable week-day 
assembly, every large Sunday congregation, contains 
at Washington not only more or less of the actual Sen- 
ate and House, but scores of clerks and military and 
naval uniforms, and above all dozens of this Lobby- 
so that every handful of good seed, skillfully thrown 
there, falls into fat furrows in every State and Terri- 
tory of the Union. Pacific and Atlantic, North and 
South, they are all there, in their likeliest represen- 
tatives: not only an immense field of useful men, but 
a most encouraging presentation of the national life 

y and character is offered in these tall, high-headed 
men, full of vigor, independence and capacity, who 
look worthy to open and settle the new country, and 
to own and improve the old. 

If now we turn to Congress itself, I think I may 
frankly own the gratification and encouragement de- 
rived from a somewhat extensive personal intercourse 

/ with the members of the House and the Senate. It 
is impossible to admire the manners of the House ; 
but I believe the British House of Commons sets 
them a poor example. There is little attention paid 
to most orators. Members read, write, stroll about, 
clap their hands for the pages, turn their backs upon 
the speakers, sometimes put thek feet up higher than 
tlieir heads upon their desks, and to the casual visitor 
seem in a very confused and unj)romising condition. 
But a few days' close watchfulness untangles the snarl, 
and discloses a very rigid rule and a close eye to pro- 
gress under all this confusion. 



11 

The real business of tlie country is done in com- 
mittees — tlie House and Senate not meeting till noon. 
Many desks are always vacated by members absent 
on committee duty. Men wlio are able to instruct 
are carefully listened to. The precise attention which 
members deserve for weight of character, for sense 
and position, is accurately accorded them. When 
speakers are really only addressing over the heads of 
the house their constituents at home, the members do 
not listen to them. When they are actually addressing 
the House with honesty and earnestness they are heard. 
When there is nothing worth hearing, members attend 
to their own business, of writing letters and reading 
documents. And, really, any one who supj)oses a Con- 
gressman to have an easy place, misunderstands his du- 
ties. He is ordinarily the victim of an immense corre- 
spondence, — receiving scores of letters every day, if 
his constituency be large and important, — asking all 
sorts of questions and all sorts of favors ; attention to 
this little affaii*, or that great question ; pressing this ap- 
pointment or that policy ; and occasionally, I am told, a 
member keeps a private clerk constantly busy with this 
part of the duty. When we add to thisj the 
wearisome sessions of the Committees, to one or 
more of which every member is attached, the study of 
private bills, and questions of local or State impor- 
tance, on which members must thoroughly prepare 
themselves to speak, the hospitalities and courtesies 
demanded by their constituents visiting Washino-ton, 
and, above all, the grave responsibilities of those 
leaders who shape the policy of the rest, it is easy to 
see that these men do not occupy sinecures. The 
present House has a high character for business ca- 
pacity and parliamentary tact and eloquence. It is 
made up of vigorous-looking and thoughtful men ; and 



12 

oue of its most respected members, as far known for 
his philautliropic and religious work as for his wealth 
and business ability, told me, that he had been most 
agreeably disappointed in the moral worth, serious- 
ness, sobriety, and purity of the members. As you 
have all observed, spirituous liquors have been ban- 
ished from the capital ; and I have reason to think 
that the i^rivate life of the great majority of the 
members has the average decorum and dignity of the 
best circles elsewhere. It is clear that the thoughtful- 
ness and earnestness of the country at large has made 
itself felt in the selection of new members, and in the 
tone, temper, and conduct of old ones. 

Turning to the Senate, we find, what we might ex- 
pect, a still higher grade of persons. The average 
ability, moral elevation and political character of the 
Senate, surpasses what has been known there for a 
quarter of a century. There are no giants, it is true ; 
no heirs of Webster's mantle, or even Clay's, Calhoun's, 
and Benton's : men who owed their exceptional great- 
ness to the immense demands of a young and forming 
country, — when a few great lights had to illumine a 
vast region without lesser lamps. But there are no 
pigmies. Men of solid sense and worth, whose faces 
and bearing are the unmistakable proofs of their self- 
respect and dignity, constitute the rank and file of the 
Senate. They are men who grow as they are ap- 
proached; more interesting in themselves than in 
what they say and do. They insjiire confidence, re- 
spect, and hope ; and are fully entitled to the trust and 
reverence of the country. It is plain enough that, with 
the necessity for it, the days of great leadership are 
gone by. The people, as they have grown more intel- 
ligent, and won leisure to attend to political affairs, 
have taken up their ow^n business, and Congress is far 



13 

more tlieir passive representative tliau formerly. Tlie 
Press now discliarges very much tlie office of a great 
speecli-makiug Congress. Henceforth there will be 
shorter and fewer speeches, and more business ; and 
statesmen are getting to be valued more for their wis- 
dom and attention to affairs than for their much 
speaking, or even their most .eloquent harangues. 

If we leave the Congressional extreme of the ave- 
nue, and go over to the other end, where the depart- 
ments cluster round the White House, we see changes 
coming over the usages of the Government, which 
call for serious consideration. During Mr. Lincoln's 
administration, the pressure on the several depart 
ments was so great and constant that their heads, it 
is said, were of very little service as privy-councillors, 
and had yery little time to spend in discussing a gen- 
eral policy. The theory of a constitutional council 
or cabinet, carefully comparing and considering and 
settling the governmental policy was, we suspect, 
essentially put at naught. Mr. Lincoln was his own 
cabinet. He was, if I am not misinformed, sometimes 
without cabinet meetings for weeks together. He 
interfered very little with the heads of departments, 
who were practically sole rulers in their several 
spheres ; and he, on the other hand, was little con- 
trolled by their advice. This I hold to be a very 
serious and dangerous innovation — none the less dan- 
gerous because Mr. Lincoln's character and success 
sanctified the error. Mr. Johnson, it i^ understood, 
adopts the usage of his predecessor ; and thus leaves 
the country, at this critical moment, without the 
counsel and guidance of a body of wise men, qualify- 
ing and enriching a common judgment, and balancing 
the obhquities and caprices, the prejudices and lean- 
ings, of an individual mind, llv, Lincoln's cabinet 



/" 



14 

meetings — and the same is true of Mr. Johnson's, it 
is said — were composed of an endless round of daily 
visitors, who, beginning early and continuing late, 
haunted the presence of the Chief Magistrate — no 
doubt bringing him into intimate acquaintance with 
public sentiment in all parts of the country, but dis- 
tracting and wearing out his mind and strength, and 
preventing that prolonged and earnest reflection and 
comparison of views with peers and statesmen which 
his position and obligations so much required. In- 
deed, the conversion of the executive into a sort of 
general agent and man of business for any and every 
body who receives private complaints and undertakes 
to do business in detail, seems to be rapidly going on, 
and mischievously, as we think, for the interests of 
the country. All the heads of departments are too 
accessible. The general policy of every department 
suffers from a good-natured and democratic readiness 
to admit intruders of all sorts — men and women — ^to 
the presence of great officers, whose minds should be 
fastened on the highest questions, and who should see 
only those they want to see, not those who want to see 
them. General Taylor, we have heard, was the only 
President, since Washington, who positively refused 
to admit a daily crowd of intruders into his presence. 
His genuine democracy put his reasons for this course 
wholly beyond the suspicion of pride of place. 

This is not intended as any reflection ujjon the 
motives of our late Presidents, but as a special ciiti- 
cism upon official habits at Washington. 

It is well understood in Washington that the 
Cabinet is divided upon the policy of the country — 
half/ perhaps, being substantially with the Presi- 
dent and half with Congress. This would be an 
impossibility if the Cabinet discussed fundamental 



15 

questions. It is probably only by confining the 
subjects of cabinet consideration to teclinical details 
that tliis antagonism is kept out of sight, and the 
President made content to keep about him men who 
do not agree with him. Perhaps he finds in this 
want of full sympathy a ground for taking his own 
opinion as the decisive policy of the government. 
On the other hand, perhaps the country and the 
Congress are glad to have men more in sympathy 
with their own notions retained in the Cabinet, even 
though as silent members, who, if they cannot agree 
with, do not oppose, the President, but exercise, by 
their very presence and known opinions, a wholesome 
restraint upon retrogressive notions. It is the opinion 
of wise men at Washington that Mr. Stanton, who 
has been a tower of strength through the war, holds 
his place in the cabinet mainly at the earnest instance 
of leading Eepublicans, to check the Presidential 
policy ; while his enormous strength with the people 
makes it impossible for Mr. Johnson to dismiss him, 
even if he would like to do so, which we have no 
reason to believe. 

It cannot be denied, then, that a certain imperial- 
ism is slowly creeping into our government — that our 
President, during his four years, is perhaps the most 
autocratic ruler in the world, having it in his power 
to throw off the control of his Cabinet and the control 
of Congress. Out of every four years. Congress is 
usually only about fifteen months in session, and the 
President has an almost unchecked dominion in the 
interval. It is well enough to play off the doctrines 
of State Rights as an offset to this essential denial of 
the control of Cabinet and Concrress, his more imme- 
diate partners in power. But it seems to us that both 
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Johnson have stricken down by 



16 

thei , peiliaps in j)art, necessary assumption of respon- 
sibility, some of the cliecks wliicli can alone secure 
the permanent safety of the country from the effects 
and caprices of a dangerous one-man power. 

In regard to the policy of reconstruction, I fully 
believe there is integrity of purpose at both ends of 
the avenue, — in Congress and in the Executive. But 
there are great, and what now seem irreconcilable, 
differences of opinion between the Legislative and 
the Executive Departments, which are retarding and 
postponing the settlement of the country. Congress, 
by great majorities, is determined not to admit the 
late Kebel States to representation without ample 
guarantees for the loyalty — not merely of the Repre- 
sentatives of those States, but of the States them- 
selves — and the communities w^hose disloyal public 
sentiment would assuredly make itself felt through 
lips garnished with the most loyal oaths. Congress 
is determined to know that the emancipation of the 
slave is a real emancipation ; his liberty a real free- 
dom ; that the spirit of secession is exorcised ; that 
the National debt is not in danger of repudiation ; 
and the Confederate debt of recognition, by a full 
Congress,, to be largely composed of the Representa- 
tives of our late enemies, a party strong enough in 
conspiracy with the spurious Democracy in the Na. 
tional Legislature, to seriously threaten the policy of 
the Union Party that carried through the war. No 
doubt these fears, honest and strong, even in the mo- 
derate portion of Congress, are somewhat aggravated 
by a natural love of power and dread of laying it 
down, and by the esjytnt de corps which animates 
every successful party. This Congress is a war Con- 
gress, and accustomed to the exceptional acts justilied 
by a state of war, full still of the anxious spirit 



17 

whicli so long tortured the national mind. It is 
backed and supported by a constituency alive with 
the thoughts and feelings the war engendered, and 
earnestly demanding that what the North and West 
talked so resolutely about, when the war was goin"- 
on, shall now be fulfilled. 

The Executive, on the other hand, and his chief 
advisers, are the proud custodians of the Constitu- 
*tion, and seem determined to restore what they call 
the normal functions of all the States, and so revive 
the old national life. They assume that the war is 
over, the rebellion subdued; they pronounce the 
courts opened, the post-office service reestablished, 
and no hindrance existing to the full representation 
of all the late Rebel States — Texas excepted — into 
the Senate and House. They insist that the Union 
has never been dissolved, the Rebel States never out 
of the Union, and of course that they cannot come in, 
because they are already in. The disorder in the 
States, they say, has been functional, not organic. 
The Union has administered a costly medicine, has 
purged oif the functional disease, and the States have 
only to resume all their rights and duties, and claim 
all their privileges ! The President is characteristic- 
ally an intense lover of the Union. He hated and 
opposed the Rebellion chiefly as an assault upon the 
Union, and his sole anxiety seems to be to make and 
kee]) the Union whole. Slavery does not seem to 
have been in his eye a great evil in any other sense, 
than as it endangered the Union. Mr. Lincoln pro- 
fessed in all his earlier speeches, and especially in his 
letter to Mr. Greeley, the same doctrine. The war 
was to put down the Rebellion, and had no other 
purpose. If slavery supported the Rebellion, it must 
go down with the other weapons and munitions of 
2 



18 

war belonging to the public enemy — but not at all 
as the end, simply as a means to the end — the resto- 
ration of order, and the suppression of insurrection. 

Constitutionally, no doubt, that is the lawyer-like 
way of putting it. But the people who fought the 
war, the Congress which represents that people, 
know and feel that the war was a war against Slavery, 
its facts, its spirit, its fruits. The Union has no 
value in itself for them, except as it covers in human 
rights and prospects. The flag does not stand*, with 
them merely for a territory stretching from gulf to 
gulf, from ocean to ocean, governed by a common 
Constitution and one power, but for certain great 
American principles of universal justice, human equal- 
ity and personal liberty. And when they see the 
mere mechanical or technical integrity of the Union 
or the restoration of all its representative functions 
preferred to the establishment of the Union on its 
true grounds of justice and humanity, they feel as if 
their rulers and themselves were talking and thinking 
about somewhat different and very incompatible 
thing's. 

But after all, our liberty is a matter of constitu- 
tional and regulated government, and with the cessa- 
tion of war, the country, from its exceptional state 
of justifiable expedients, necessarily falls back upon 
its written letter. The quickening spirit which has 
temporarily enlivened even the most torpid parts of 
that letter, gradually ebbs away. We come back to 
the cold bond ; and all the parties to it must finally 
consent to interpret it strictly. It is a painful neces- 
sity to abide by a Constitution which is less generous 
and noble, and less favorable to human rights, than 
the public sentiment of half a great country. But 
we originally purchased our Union by compromises. 



19 

and I presume it must be sustained by compromises. 
It is simply the duty of the more advanced, intelli- 
gent and humane States, to see that no opportunity 
is lost to improve the Constitution, or to secure the 
noblest and more generous readings of it by the Su- 
preme Court. 

It is this necessity, so well understood by the far- 
sighted, which gives strength to the President's posi- 
tion. He says in effect, " The Constitution as it is, is 
good enough for me, and good enough for the coun- 
try. Hands off ! All changes are of doubtful value, 
at least to the Southern States. Do nothing when 
you don't know exactly what to do. Let the old 
machine in all its members resume its old motions, 
and all will be well ! " " What ! " says Congress, 
" without providing for the universal security of civil 
rights ; without giving free suffrage ; without at least 
seeing that the basis of representation is the actual 
number of voters ; without disfranchising the leaders 
of the Eebellion ? " " Yes ! " says Mr. Johnson and 
his friends, " without anything but defending your 
Senate Chamber and your House of Representatives 
from the presence of men who cannot take all the 
oaths of ofBce." 

Sympathizing mainly with Congress, and not at 
all with the President in his doctrine, I yet half 
expect to see his policy prevail, because it appeals to 
the wide-spread desire for swift tranquillization ; be- 
cause there is such an intense longing on the j^art ot 
the lousiness and financial classes of the Community 
for the revival of free and extensive trade and com- 
merce with the Southern States ;. because the better 
policy implies the steady triumph of lofty ideas and 
noble sentiments over economical and temporary 
interests, and supposes the nation kept up at the 



20 

moral level to which actual war elevated it. It will 
prevail, I fear, because the laywers and courts will sus- 
tain it ; because it is simple and direct ; requires noth- 
ing to be done, but only a laissez-faire policy. It will, 
alas ! prevail even against present appearances, because 
the literature, the poetry, the talking and leading spii'its 
of this country unhappily do not represent its votes ! 
The very reverse of what is true of England, happens 
here. There the voters do gross injustice to the pub- 
lic sentiment, not one-eighth part of it having the 
franchise, and the English people may hate the 
Southern Confederacy, at the moment Parliament is 
encouraging it. Here the voters are out of all pro- 
portion to the intelligence, elevation and patriotism 
of the country, especially of that portion which is 
heard in literature, or pulpits, or dignified presses — 
and often the public sentiment seems to go one way, 
the votes another ! " Shoot low " is not only a rule 
with good soldiers, but with successful politicians. 
The President and his friends, as we fear, understand 
the country better than a Congress representing 
mainly the noble spirit which temporarily filled even 
vulgar souls during the war. They reckon on the 
average utilitarian, selfish instincts of the nation, on 
the popular wash for a settled currency and a driv- 
ing business, and chances for sending all sorts of ven- 
tures into the South. 

The shrewd, sagacious politicians of this country 
see which way the cat is going to jump, and, when 
their principles are weaker than their interests, they 
prepare to jump with it. The moment it becomes a 
little more apparent, what is going to succeed, we 
shall have a new party organized upon it. Already 
it is adumbrated, and will soon take substantial 
form. 



21 

The only comfort wliicli belongs to sucli a state 
of tilings is, that finally, the interests of a free nation 
with a free press, popular education, and democratic 
institutions, do not, except at serious crises, depend 
as much as we think upon its government for the 
growth of a pure public sentiment, or for the moral 
progress and safety of society. At this very hour 
the American spirit is doing more to rehabilitate the 
South than any possible legislation could ; and the 
necessities of the case, the logic of events, are arrang- 
ing the relations of the negro and the white man faster 
and better than any general or State laws would be 
able to do. A great many theoretical evils disappear 
in practice. The negro surprises his old master with 
his good sense. He has nK)re self-care and more 
steadiness than he ever gave him credit for. 
Half of the blacks probably are laboring under con- 
tracts ; a quarter more are fitfully living from hand to 
mouth, and a quarter are stealing, wandering, and 
loitering round. Necessity will soon drive far the 
greater part of these to work. Meanwhile, the 
demand for labor will soon introduce a competition in 
wages and kind treatment, between planters, favorable 
to the rights and elevation of the colored race. The 
Southerner undervalues the negro still. He thinks 
he knows him better than we do — as parents always 
think they know their children better than their 
teachers or their playmates — a great mistake. The 
planter has seen him too near, and we have seen him 
too far off, to know him well — but our judgment is 
better in the general, and his in particulars. We see 
him in the lisfht of a common nature, and as freedom 
would make him ; he, as a special, degraded race and 
in the actual penumbra of slavery. Neither they of 
the South nor we of the North trust enougk the 



90, 



elevating influence of liberty. They expected nothing 
from it to change the negro's intelligence and thrift, 
but much to emancipate his passions and flatter his 
sloth ; we expect too little from it, in the way of 
stimulating his whole being, and making him inde- 
pendent of our nursing and protection. The influence, 
on the negro character and pros2:)ects, of emancipation 
already ap2:)ears. It is worse in some respects and far 
better in others than we think. The race will be 
decimated rapidly, and its relative proportions not 
sustained. A fearful percentage are predestined to 
ruin and rapid decay — they have been artificially 
nursed and propagated, and must pay the penalty of 
this animal-raising. But the larger proportion will 
rapidly rise to the dignity of self-protecting, self- 
supporting citizens, and are proving the beneficent 
influences of freedom, every day. 

In the same way, the ordinary interests of the 
South are rapidly reviving, and will rej^ort their 
prosperity much earlier than we commonly fear. 
The churches, the schools, the places of amusement, 
the newspapers are again reviving and busy. The 
people are not so desperately anxious for political 
rights on any terms, as we fancy, and might soon 
even discover that Representation itself is not more 
absolutely indispensable to them than to us. It is the 
drift of a young country, full of life and energy, and 
setting towards prosperity, that forms the main hope 
of wise men for the restoration of general comfort, 
and common and peaceful relations. I must think 
peace, prosperity, union in less danger than noble 
faith, recognition of great humanities, and rapid prog- 
ress in the sense of justice and essential equality. 

This sense of the self-healing and self-rectifying 
tendencies of our national life and character, is doubt- 



23 

less at tlie bottom of the elastic faitli of the Secretary 
of State — who four years ago drew his notes payable 
at ninety clays for the restoration of peace and union, 
has confidently renewed them every ninety days 
since, and utters them with bolder confidence now 
than ever. The most philosophical of our statesmen, 
the American De Tocqueville, he looks into the 
natural and universal causes of political events, and 
bases his optimism upon human nature. He agrees 
with De Tocqueville, too, in a not very lofty view of 
human nature, and is content with something far 
short of 'the ideal in " this wicked world." A sincere 
patriot, a self relying statesman, imperturbable under 
abuse and suspicion, acting quite as much in reference 
to foreign as to domestic judgments, and living 
habitually in the forum of all nations, Mr. Seward 
has the broadest grasp and the most intelligent ap- 
preciation of public affairs of all living Americans. 
The world has mistaken him for an ideologist and an 
ultraist. I wish he were more of both. He has the 
philosopher and the politician in equal projDortions 
in his composition — but less of the sage and the saint 
than some of the moralists and patriots of the coun- 
try might desire. Practical sagacity and diplomatic 
adroitness are united in him with breadth of reason 
and wealth of knowledge and experience. We miss a 
little moral height of view and elevation of spirit. 
But what can exaggerate the majestic service his 
genius, self-control, and address have rendered the 
country in its foreign relations ? 

On the whole, my visit to Washington strength- 
ened my confidence, and relieved my worst fears. 
I had begun to think the days of 1851 in France 
might be repeated here, when the President of the 
French and the National Assembly occupied very 



24 

mucli tlie same relation to eacli other whicli Mr. John- 
son lias borne to Congress, and when it was for a time 
uncertain whether the Assembly would arrest the 
President, or the President the Assembly. The crime 
was left, you remember, for him. It seemed not im- 
possible that a similar coiifp (Petat might happen here. 
But that fear was based upon the suspicion that the 
President was a bad, a weak, and a capricious man, 
whose body and spirit were both intoxicated with his 
elevation to power, and who, having disappointed and 
betrayed his party, was capable of any worse thing. 
I rejoice in being able to say that abundant oppor- 
tunities were given me to dissipate that fear ; that I 
believe nothing of the indecent rumors touching the 
President's insobriety ; that I think him a very able, a 
very earnest, and a very patriotic man, honest in his 
opinions and prejudices. He is, be it remembered, a 
Southerner, and has been a slaveholder ; he is self- 
educated ; he has been all his life a combatant and a 
stump-orator. He has no conventional notions of 
dignity, though far from wanting personal presence 
and good manners. He was made Vice-President, 
with the chance of becoming President, by the Re- 
publican party, because of his birth-place, antece- 
dents, and character. These have not changed, and 
we are bound to make all the allowances which our 
own former calculations and risks now make neces- 
sary. I think that Congress has not handled the 
President with perfect wisdom ; that they might 
have admitted Tennessee, and so honored the prin- 
ciple of the right to representation, waiting their own 
time to admit others ; or that they might have ad- 
mitted a few States, and tried the experiment of their 
behavior. Now, too, they have before them a com- 
plicated scheme of reconstruction, with altogether 



25 

too many wheels and springs and too much top ham- 
per to run on any common road. The President has a 
simple positive policy, which, I confess, is altogether 
too trustful and too little guarded, to suit my ideas. 
But the Committee of Keconstruction have submitted 
another, which is in its very nature self destructive, 
and if adopted, could not be carried out. It combines 
so many things about which different people and 
communities cannot agree — that it may be said to 
have broken down l>efore it started. Let one plain,. 
stout, intelhgible issue be presented to the people 
before it is too late. Let it be solely this, tlie basis- 
of representation sliall he the actual voters in each 
State^ and I think there is yet a hope that we may 
do something to provide for the sure though gradual 
introduction of universal suffrage, while we make it 
the interest of the South to protect, educate, and 
favor its black population. As to everything else, a 
true statesmanship would let it go, either as impos- 
sible, or inexpedient, or superfluous. General, nay 
universal, amnesty, is our policy. Do not let us put 
out the eyes of our Samson before we admit him into 
our temple. Why deprive the people of the South 
of their natural leaders ? Why make it the interest 
and the vengeance of every distinguished man in that 
country, to hate, and to teach hatred to, this Govern- 
ment ? I believe we must pardon the whole South, 
for it is equally guilty, and receive it back like a 
half-penitent prodigal, whom we make wholly peni- 
tent, by treating him not according to his deserts, 
but according to our own magnanimity and mercy. 

Meanwhile, the great result of the war, and its 
full payment, the extinction of slavery, is by univer- 
sal concession, already secure. No one could visit 
the Senate and the House, and behold never less 



26 

than five-and-twenty negroes sitting as his equals in 
the galleries of each, listening to the debates of their 
own Congress — without feeling the tremendous and 
substantial change the war has wrought ! And this 
extinction of slavery inevitably draws most other 
moral and political evils out at the issues of its uptorn 
roots. The venom of the State Ki^'its doctrine was 
under the tongue of the serpent slavery, which always 
lay coiled in its leaves. With its disappearance, 
State rights will assume henceforth a milder and less 
threatening aspect. Those who judge most calmly, 
think the loyalty of the Southern States like enough 
to outstrip our own, both because it will be new, and 
because they will be more dependent on Federal care 
than ourselves. Let us, then, seek to calm and en- 
courage the public mind, and not leave to turn- coats 
and renegades, political self-seekers and cunning office- 
holders, the explanation and defence of the Presi- 
dent's policy, accompanied with defamation of the 
noble men who occupy our Senate and lead the 
House. The people want honest, intelligible informa- 
tion. They want to know what is practicable and 
what is not ; what portion of theii- ideal hopes and 
wishes they must surrender or postjDone, and what 
they may now hope to realize ; how much is dej^end- 
ent on political action, and how much may be trusted 
to general influences. I have endeavored to give 
you, as a portion of the people, a plain, frank, and 
simple expression of my observations, experiences, 
and impressions during ten days just spent at the 
capital, and I hope it may lead you to think better 
of the seat of Government, better of our public men, 
and more cheerfully of the present prospects and 
ultimate resolution of the political situation. 



___ — ^ 

' ^ PUBLIC LIFE m WASHINGTON, ^ 



THE MORAL ASPECTS OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL, 



APPARENT TENDENCIES OF POLITICAL THOUGHT AND 
FEELING IN CONGRESS AND CABINET. 

AN ADDRESS 

READ ON SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 7, 1866, TO HIS OWN CONGRE- 
GATION, 



HENEY W: BELLOWS, 

MINISTER OF "ALL SOULS' CHURCU." ^A^, 



NEW YORK: 

JAMES MILLER. 

1866. 




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